Late Mark Kleiman Influences Seattle’s Mayor

In MyNorthwest, “Mayor Harrell Announces ‘Hot Spot’ Patrol Crime Initiative, Push to Rewrite Local Gun Laws,” the ideas and teachings of the late NYU Marron faculty member Mark Kleiman continue to influence urban managers:

Following the release of a Seattle Police Department 2021 crime report which outlined that violent crime has reached a 14-year high in the city, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and Interim Police Chief Adrian Diaz announced Friday their commitment to “resetting community norms” by targeting specific areas of the city with disproportionate crime rates, as well as lobbying Washington state to exempt the city from firearms preemption laws....

“I’m very cognizant of working with defense lawyers,” he said. “In criminology work, there’s a part of a surprise element often, there’s often a part where you are resetting community norms. Director of Strategic Initiatives Tim Burgess just gave me a book many years ago that I read: ‘When Brute Force Fails.’”

“And in that strategy, it talks about how you announce what you’re trying to do, you even let the criminals know, you let the defense bar know,” he continued. “You let the city know we’re cleaning out certain areas. And so we’re going to employ some of the tactics in that book that we think make a lot of sense.”

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